|
|
"History is just people doing things" THE ABQ
CORRESPONDENT
ISSN 1087-2302 Online
Edition Number 327......March 2023 Published since 1985 for clients and contacts
of of The ABQ Correspondent is "the
impact of new ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This issue
marks the start of the 38th year since the Correspo was first
published. Woof! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ FARMING We had reason
recently to look at the website of the seed-producing company Pioneer
Hi-bred, founded in the 1920s by Henry A. Wallace. He was a Vice-President under FDR and later ran for President
himself. (In retrospect, if he’d been elected, he would probably have appointed
as U.S. Secretary of State an advisor who later turned out to be a spy for the
USSR…not that Wallace was a flaming leftist; he was a naďve botanist in the
company of politicians.) As Secretary
of Agriculture he visited the Pueblos here in the Southwest, where my friend and sometime employer Dr.
Sophie Aberle was supervising all the pueblos for the BIA, he explained to
the Zunis how they should really be growing corn, which they had been
doing for some thousands of years, not fully appreciating the idea that
the approach to agriculture is necessarily different here in the high desert
from what it is in central Iowa. She also had to arrange for him to have
an overnight room on the East side of the Acoma mesa, so that the sun
could flood magnificently into his window in the morning. The folks at
Acoma didn’t have any rooms like that. For religious reasons, I think, they didn’t
want the morning sun to get them. It was a major project to satisfy Mr.
Wallace, but they managed. In later times
I knew a CHAP who’d been in business with Wallace during the ’60s, selling
shiploads of grain here and there around the world. When it turned out
that their secretary had industriously been embezzling from the company
and she vigorously threatened them out on being discovered, botanist Jerry
Twomey, went out of his way to be as cooperative as possible with every
interested government agency from the local cops to the Secret Service.
“That was a former U.S. Vice-President she was threatening,” he said. “The
government takes a real interest in such matters.” As a Canadian citizen,
he was extra sensitive to their concerns. Jerry also commented
that the Russians were extremely hard negotiators when buying U.S.
wheat, then testing shipments carefully to be sure that its protein
content was not below what had been agreed upon. We weren’t much concerned with that, because
most of our population gets its protein from meat…but the Russ didn’t have
much meat and it really mattered to them. After the terms were settled,
he said, a deal was a deal and they lived up to agreements faithfully. Gosh, I hadn’t thought about all this for 25 years or so. BUBBLES Early in
February of 2023, Americans were surprised, and many were indignant, to see a
very large Chinese balloon carrying instruments in a frame described
as being “as long as three buses.” It was in the stratosphere well
above commercial air traffic, no one suggested that it carried weapons, and
it was plainly visible from the ground. China explained it as a commercial
device that happened to get away from its owners, and apologized
mildly. There was much asking “why haven’t we shot this down yet?”
but those with the ability to do the shooting explained that there was some
hazard in causing a thing three buses long to fall several miles to inhabited
ground, so they waited until it was over the Atlantic just off the
coast of South Carolina “within the 12-mile limit” as they carefully put it. At
this writing, there are no detailed reports of what was aboard…and
probably won’t be...at least not true reports. In the
couple of weeks following, the U.S. also shot down…and reportedly lost...three
more biggish balloons that were probably weather observers that drifted off or
experimental, even amateur balloons that got away from their makers. The
whole incident was surreal…especially the surprisingly casual acceptance by the U.S. Government
and the expectedly cranky, but not-much-ruffled comments of China. One apparent
side effect was the delay of a scheduled visit by the U.S. Secretary
of State to China. There are diplomatic wheels within wheels, of course,
and for all we know this could have been agreed-upon by the U.S. and China
as a plausible excuse to put off that meeting for other important
reasons. (Not suggesting that’s the case, just speculating on the
improbable…note that there’s a rumor rampant in UFO circles that there
will be announcements made in April 2023 of contact with extraterrestrials.
That worldwide phenomenon might cause rearrangement of schedules while
various governments try to figure out what to do.) Mind you, I dunno anything,
not an insider, just a bemused spectator.) Then
again, I do recall
some things from longer ago than most people do. Sending balloons to carry
weapons great distances to more-or-less random locations is not new.
During WWII Japan launched a lot of balloons carrying bombs into the
jet stream that would carry them to the United States., but the program
was not very effective, killing a few picnickers with no strategic
effect. In the 1950s and 1960s, just before the era of satellite
reconnaissance, the U.S. had a fairly successful
program of using balloons for spying on Russia (presumably Russia was
doing the same thing to spy on us.) I knew a couple of guys involved in that.
Reportedly,
a balloon could make as many as many as seven trips around the world, carried by the
circumpolar vortex, recording pictures on film at appropriate times. That
was before the marvels of semiconductors, integrated circuits, and all that,
so they couldn’t transmit hi-res images to the people eagerly awaiting
them. Those folks had to get their hands on the film. They did it by
dropping packets from the balloons for retrieval. When we
lived in Mountain View CA in the early ‘60s, we occasionally saw interesting
things in the sky from our back yard. I clearly recall seeing the separation
of second-stages from rockets launched from
Vanderberg about 250 miles to the south. The vehicles themselves weren’t
visible, but the firing rockets made a splashy show. What we also couldn’t
see…because the action was out over the Pacific, miles away...were military
planes skillfully grabbing parachutes and their payloads dropped from the
balloons. My not-entirely-firm impression is that this activity lasted into
the later era with payloads retrieved from satellites. A sidelight
on the big balloon business: rather surprisingly, the organizations with the
necessary expertise were the big milling companies centered in Minneapolis. A
friend who worked in the program for General Mills (I think) commented that if
he’d been seen lunching with a known Russian spy, he’d just have been warned
away from such company, but if he’d been seen with somebody from
Pillsbury, he’d have been in serious trouble. In any
case, we’re in sort of an awkward position to complain about other people’s
balloons. Item: A company called Hermeus Aircraft is seriously planning to create a
20-passenger airliner that operates at five times the speed of sound…enabling
travel between New York and Paris in 90 minutes (one could almost commute
daily). A major feature of their work is that it uses existing technology instead
of calling for new developments. Their vehicles (a couple of unmanned craft
will be flying before the airliner) switch from familiar turbojet propulsion
that can move planes to as fast as Mach 3 to ramjet propulsion when the
adequate speed is obtained, using a hybrid engine. They’re planning to
provide hypersonic passenger service as soon As 2029.
Their website is interesting. …and if, like me, you’re a bit fuzzy on the differences
among turbojets, ramjets and scramjets, this very clear
explanation will be helpful. Item: The Correspo commented recently on a 3D printer
that uses ultrasound to form objects inside a container of gelatinous
material. The object formed can then be removed from the gelatin and used. Ultrasound
is now forming
3D objects in another way; a “sonic hologram” is used to push selected
cells together gently in new configurations, creating different biological
structures. Baffling, but intriguing. Item: People are modifying
all sorts of materials in surprising ways, perhaps even usefully. One team
has found a fairly simple way to make wood harder. So what? Well, they have
demonstrated their ability to make sharp knives and sturdy nails that don’t
rust out of the treated material. See here. ITEM
FROM THE PAST This item from 1996 is
recalled by the mention of Dr. Aberle in another story in
this issue. Hundreds of years ago, people pecked interesting
symbols into the jumbled rocks in a volcanic escarpment near Albuquerque,
and one area, with a high density of these doodles, became a protected state
park a few years ago. Nels Winkless commented to Dr. Sophie
Aberle,
distinguished former member of the National Science Board who lives nearby,
that there seemed to be more petroglyphs in the area after it became a
park than before. "That must be Roscoe's work," she
said. "He loves to make those things, but of course he doesn't
understand them, and they have no meaning." Roscoe Pacquin was a
Zuni Indian, roughly ninety at the time, who had been part of
Dr. Aberle's household since about 1940, with lots of free
time. "We agreed," says Nels, "that the things are
legitimate Old Indian Petroglyphs, not because they were done a long time
ago, but because Roscoe was an old Indian." History is full
of comedy. That escarpment has since become the Petroglyph
National Monument and her home and grounds have become its Visitor Center. When I knew Dr.
Aberle in those pre-internet days, I had only a
vague sense of what her credentials were and what she
had done. She was something else again. Once, in an
argument with a cacique during a meeting in a kiva, she
snatched the Lincoln
Cane from him, and shook it
at him while making a point. She realized while she
was shaking it that it was unwise for her to do that as a
lone woman among the dignitaries of that pueblo, so
she made her point, handed the cane back to him, and
climbed the ladder out of the place without further
incident. She figured everybody was too stunned to
act, and she’d been lucky.
Knowing that
she had long been married to a guy named Bill Brophy,
I once asked her why she used the name Aberle. “My
middle name is Bledsoe” she said, “and if you think I
want to be known as Sophie B. Brophy, think
again.” Roscoe lived in
a small apartment building on the edge of her property,
carefully keeping his windows covered, so
that he couldn’t easily be witched by malevolent
forces that had something against him. A little drive
served that building and somebody else’s home back against
the escarpment. As as the years passed, that
drive became a formal street named in Roscoe’s honor.
It seems to be gone now, consumed by the parking
area for the center.
Too bad. A Pacquin (or “pekwin”) is the “sun priest” in Zuni. Roscoe’s
father, whose photograph appears in a 1903 Smithsonian
Special Report on the Southwest, was a pacquin for the
pueblo, and Roscoe would have taken up the post
himself, had his dad not passed away when Roscoe was
still too young to learn the trade. He did take the
name. At the Tsabatseye/Mahooty wedding at Zuni some years since, we
met Roscoe’s nephew, who considered Dr. Aberle an
even odder character than Roscoe...and he was a
character and a half. In his late eighties, for example, he
took up a sideline of selling wigs, which he’d
demonstrate by wearing them, trading off different
styles in the course of a day. Because I was
writing things for Dr. Aberle, he always called me The
Story Man. I was flattered. Gad, this recalls
still more. Another time,
perhaps. Oh…just one
thing. A fairly convincing argument has been
made that somebody well before Roscoe chipped Chinese
characters into one of the stones in that escarpment
(which I can see from our living- room window).
The ideograms appear to be a very early form…suggesting
that they were placed there a
couple of thousand years BC. This stirs some entertaining
controversy and speculation. The exact location of
the petroglyph has not been revealed, so I can’t go
and stare at it ignorantly. Aw. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everybody is a Somebody --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’ll figure out a practical alternative one of these
times, and post the information when I have it. Meanwhile, the picture of the cover makes a sort of
graphically useful anchor at the bottom of this page, so it will stay while I
fumble. Bah. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright © 2023 ABQ Communications Corporation All Rights Reserved |
